New Line Network (also known as simply New Line) is an American broadcast television network that was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye as a division of his film distribution business, New Line Cinema, and began operations on January 22, 1968. It became a subsidiary of the Turner Broadcasting System in 1994 before Turner merged with Time Warner in 1996, which made New Line the sister network to The WB Television Network and Warner Bros. Television Network (which will merge in 2017). In 2008, it was folded into Warner Bros.' network television division.

Headquartered at the Time Warner Center in New York City and the Warner Bros. headquarters in Burbank, California; with master control based at the New Line Center in Chicago, Illinois; New Line is available throughout America on over-the-air television stations in many markets and as a must-carry station on pay television.

Contents

Overview

New Line logo used from 2011 to 2017, it will still be used on a secondary basis and on O&O station logos.

New Line Network provides a complete 24-hour network schedule of news, sports, entertainment and children's programming through two feeds; one for the Eastern and Central Time Zones and the other for the Pacific Time Zone.

On October 9, 2006 at 6:00 a.m., the network switched to a 24-hour schedule, becoming one of the last major English-language broadcasters to transition to such a schedule. Most New Line owned-and-operated stations previously signed off the air during the early morning hours (typically from 1:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.). Instead of the infomercials aired by most other major networks, New Line uses the time to air repeats, including local news, primetime series, movies and other programming from the Time Warner library. Affiliates still have to option to sign off every night.

While historically there has been room for regional differences in the schedule, as there is today (see "Stations", below), for New Line O&Os, various funding crises at the parent New Line company resulted in most stations only broadcasting on weekdays an hour-long morning newscast, an hour-long noon newscast, a 120-minute early-evening newscast and a 90-minute late-evening newscast, along with a 60-minute early evening newscast on Saturday nights, and a 60-minute late evening newscast on Sunday nights, and usually no other local programming.

Programming

Newscasts

New Line's national morning newscast, New Line Sunrise, airs weekday mornings from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. EST, Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. EST, and Sundays from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. EST. New Line also airs graveyard-slot news updates, New Line Overnight News, Sunday through Fridays from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. EST, and a national late news program, New Line News Weekend Recap, Sundays from 11 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. EST.

In addition, New Line owned-and-operated stations and affiliates in most markets fill up to four standard timeslots (the 6 a.m. hour leading into New Line Sunrise on weekdays in all time zones, the noon hour on weekdays in all time zones, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. EST/4 p.m. to 6 p.m. CST Monday through Saturdays, and 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. (Sundays)/11:30 p.m. EST (weeknights)/9 p.m. to 10 p.m. (Sundays)/10:30 p.m. (weeknights) CST) with local newscasts. Until October 2006, New Line owned-and-operated stations aired 11 p.m. EST newscasts; that month, New Line cancelled all of these 11 p.m. EST newscasts and replaced them with other programming, but as of the 2012-13 television season, most New Line O&Os have resumed airing local newscasts at 11 p.m. EST. New Line owned-and-operated stations and affiliates in most markets also air a short local news update, at most, on late Saturday evenings, during the period in between the two movies of the New Line At The Movies Saturday primetime double feature. Weekly newsmagazine From New Line is also a New Line mainstay.

Movies

New Line airs feature-length movies, marketed as New Line At The Movies, at various time slots, including during primetime Sunday nights from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. EST; and most notably Saturday nights from 8 p.m. to midnight EST. These movie presentations have gone on to become one of the most popular shows on the network.

New Line At The Movies began airing on January 27, 1968, only five days after the network's launch. Initially airing only a single Saturday movie, the modern incarnation airs two movies on that night. The Saturday broadcast features various segments during commercial breaks and between movies (such as Ricky Conner's Ricky Knows, Hollywood Doesn't). Warner Bros. Television has owned the New Line At The Movies brand since 2008, when it was acquired alongside previous owner New Line Television.

Until the 1990s, there was only one movie televised each Saturday night. Beginning in 1988, the network began showing occasional double features when that night was selected in particular to host a big-ticket broadcast of a network television debut of a major blockbuster film. Beginning in the fall of 1995, weekly double-features became the norm.

Although Warner Bros. Television is the legal owner of the presentation under a time-brokerage agreement, other major studios have licensed their libraries for airing on the block.

Saturday mornings

New Line airs a block of Cartoon Network series, titled Cartoon Network on New Line, on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to noon EST.

New Line began airing children's programming in the mid-1970's with the debut of New Line Saturdays (rebranded as the New Line Toon Zone in 1979, and then to simply New Line Toons in 1987), a programming block that aired on Saturday mornings.

After the Turner Broadcasting System acquired New Line, Inc. in 1994, New Line Toons formed an alliance with Cartoon Network, resulting over time in an increasing number of programs being shared between the block and the cable channel, to the point that the cable channel's programming eventually occupied the entirety of the block by the mid-2000's (decade), resulting in the block's present-day name.

Three different series based on the Bunnicula children's novels aired on New Line Toons during the 1990's decade, as did a revival of the Mixels franchise, The Mixels Show, each of which saw viewer popularity.

New Line HD

In September 2004, New Line launched a high definition simulcast of its New York (WNLNY) and Chicago (WCNLN) stations. By January 2007, the network had also launched HD simulcasts in Los Angeles (KNLNL); Washington, D.C. (WNLNW); Denver (KNLDC), San Francisco (KNLSF), Boston (WBNLN), Miami (WNLNM), Atlanta (WNLNA), Detroit (WNLND), Minneapolis (KNLNM) and Philadelphia (WPNLN). New Line HD is available nationally via satellite and on digital cable as well as for free over-the-air using a regular TV antenna and a digital tuner (included in most new television sets) on all New Line O&Os and most New Line affiliates, though many subchannel-only affiliates do not broadcast in HD over-the-air. All HD channels map to their analog positions via the North American PSIP virtual channeling standard.

On June 13, 2009, as part of the analog television shutoff and digital conversion, all New Line over-the-air HD broadcasts switched from the 1080i to 720p resolution format.

Stations

23 New Line television stations in 20 states are owned and operated by New Line itself. New Line O&O stations operate as a mostly seamless national service with few deviations from the main network schedule, although there are some regional differences from time to time. For on-air identification, most New Line stations use the New Line (channel number) branding, for example, flagship WNLNY brands as New Line 60. All New Line O&O stations have a standard five-digit call letter naming convention, in that the letters "NL" are always included somewhere within the last four digits of the calls and some letters include an additional "N" after "NL".

13 New Line O&O stations have been cleared as superstations available on a national basis by various cable and satellite systems, but three (WNLND, WNLNM and WPNLN) currently have not allowed their high-definition feeds to be carried nationally.

The rest of the New Line stations are owned-and-operated by outside broadcast groups or local companies and can use either three-, four- or five-digit call letters. Such stations generally follow the New Line schedule, airing a minimum 40 hours per week of network programming. However, they may opt out of some New Line programming in order to air locally produced programs or syndicated series. In these cases, the New Line programming being displaced may be broadcast at a different time than the network, or may not be broadcast on the station at all. Most non-O&O affiliates generally opt out of New Line's afternoon schedule and Thursday prime time movie programming. Some of the non-O&O affiliates have begun adding New Line's overnight programming to their schedules since the network began broadcasting 24 hours a day.

On November 5, 2007, 5,500 employees of New Line Network (about 90%) were locked out in a dispute over future hiring practices. At issue were the rules governing the hiring of contract workers in preference to full-time hires. The locked-out employees represented all production, journalistic and on-air personnel. While New Line remained on the air during the lockout, it was primarily made up of repeats, with news programming consisting solely of simulcasts of co-owned (through Time Warner) CNN. Major New Line programs were not produced during the lockout; some non-New Line Television-owned programs seen on the network shifted to other studios. Meanwhile, the locked-out employees produced podcasts and websites such as NoNewLine.com.

After a hiatus, talks re-opened. Late in the evening of February 12, 2008, it was announced that New Line management and staff had reached a tentative deal which resulted in New Line returning to normal operations a week later. Like the 1988 dispute, this was connected to and took place at the same time as the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike.